‘Quartermaster of Terror’

In response to:

In Patrick Radden Keefe’s review of Blood from Stones: The Secret Network of Terror by Douglas Farah [NYR, February 10], he writes that “a 2002 report to the UN Security Council cites ‘an institutional confusion between religion and finance’ in Saudi Arabia….” His reference footnote 14 reads: “Jean-Charles Brisard, ‘Terrorism Financing,’ report prepared for the president of the Security Council, United Nations, December 19, 2002. See also Timur Kuran, Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton University Press, 2004).”

Your readers should know that Mr. Brisard’s report was not solicited by the president of the UN Security Council; the president at that time, Alfonso Valdivieso, has categorically denied either soliciting or commissioning any reports from Mr. Brisard. Furthermore, Mr. Kieran Prendergast, undersecretary-general for political affairs at the UN and a member of the Policy Working Group (PWG) on the United Nations and Terrorism, has publicly stated that “no member of the PWG requested Mr. Brisard to prepare a report to the Group about the financing of terrorism or about any other topic related to terrorism.”